Confronta i metodi

	Chaine Operatoire	Debitage Analysis
Campo	Archeologia	Archeologia
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	1993	1985
Ideatore	Andre Leroi-Gourhan (concept); operationalized for lithics by Francois Sellet and the French technological school	Alan P. Sullivan & Kenneth C. Rozen (interpretation-free typology); systematized by William Andrefsky
Tipo	Analytical reconstruction of the full sequence of technical operations from raw material to discard	Classification and quantification of flaking debris to infer reduction stage and technology
Fonte seminale	Sellet, F. (1993). Chaine Operatoire; The Concept and Its Applications. Lithic Technology, 18(1-2), 106-112.	Sullivan, A. P., & Rozen, K. C. (1985). Debitage Analysis and Archaeological Interpretation. American Antiquity, 50(4), 755-779.
Alias	Operational Sequence Analysis, Reduction Sequence Approach, Chaine Operatoire Analysis, Technological Sequence Analysis	Flaking Debris Analysis, Debitage Typology, Mass Analysis of Debitage, Flake Debris Analysis
Correlati	2	2
Sintesi	The chaine operatoire, or operational sequence, is an analytical framework that reconstructs the entire ordered chain of technical actions and decisions by which a raw material is transformed into a tool, used, maintained, and finally discarded. Originating in the technological anthropology of Andre Leroi-Gourhan, the concept treats technology not as a set of finished objects but as a process — a sequence of gestures, choices, and constraints that materializes human know-how, or savoir-faire. As Sellet's influential synthesis explains, applying the chaine operatoire to stone tools means tracking material from its geological source through acquisition, core preparation, blank production, tool shaping, use and rejuvenation, and eventual abandonment, with every stage represented by characteristic artifacts and by-products. The approach is dynamic and behavioral rather than typological: it asks how and why objects were made the way they were. It complements attribute-based macroscopic analysis, which Andrefsky systematizes, by binding individual technological readings into a coherent narrative of production from start to finish.	Debitage analysis is the study of flaking debris — the flakes, fragments, and shatter struck off during stone-tool manufacture — to infer how stone was reduced, by what techniques, and to what stage. Because debitage typically outnumbers finished tools many times over at a site, it is the richest and most representative evidence of production, and quantifying it lets archaeologists reconstruct knapping behavior even where the tools themselves were carried away. Sullivan and Rozen's landmark 1985 paper argued that earlier debitage typologies smuggled interpretation into their categories, and proposed an interpretation-free classification based on a few objective morphological observations, separating description from inference. Alongside this typological approach sit aggregate methods such as mass analysis and size grading, which Andrefsky systematizes, that characterize whole assemblages by weight and size-class distributions rather than piece by piece. Together these techniques turn waste flakes into a quantitative record of the reduction process.